


a deadly kind of fall

by fishycorvid



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, During Series, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Fluffy, Gina and Jake friendship, Mostly Canon Compliant, Pre-Series, Promises, Promises to Never Fall in Love, a neverending cycle of hurt/comfort, angsty, but i'm still playing fast and loose with stories and characterization, such is life, that's a huge aspect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 10:16:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14258808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: Jake is only seven when he makes a promise that is almost definitely ill-advised. Like most ill-advised choices he has made and will make, Gina is present, as is crappy junk food.





	a deadly kind of fall

**Author's Note:**

> anyways i had writers' block for the last week and couldn't write anything, then i sat down at my comp like an hour or two again and whipped this angsty messy thinkpiece together that's like 40% projection??? whatever tho, enjoy!!

Jake is only seven when he makes a promise that is almost definitely ill-advised. Like most ill-advised choices he has made and will make, Gina is present, as is crappy junk food. (In this case, ice cream and mac and cheese. Not together, because even Jake is too classy for that.) They’re sitting on the floor of Nana’s living room, watching some film that’s certainly too violent and sexual considering their age, though they’re not paying attention. Instead, they’re mostly watching each other out of the corner of their eyes. 

They both speak at the same time, after several minutes of awkward semi-silence against the backdrop of spoons clinking against bowls and gunshots on the television: 

“So, Jakey--” 

“I’ve decided something.” 

Gina eyes him suspiciously and with vague annoyance, although it’s not like she had anything planned when she’d started her sentence. She too is only seven, but she already knows her modus operandi is flailing through life with as much confidence as possible and rolling with wherever that takes her. 

“What’ve you decided, kiddo?” 

“Okay, point the first: I know you’re only calling me that to screw with me, but I’m still annoyed, so shut up. Point the second: I promise to never fall in love, ever, no matter what.” 

The unspoken words lie in the air: _Not after today. Not after dad. Not after mom, crumpling against the doorframe, trying to hide her sobbing. Not after me, standing in the kitchen with a cold grilled cheese, not looking out the window and not looking at mom and not looking anywhere, just standing, eyes wide open and blank._

If either of them was maybe a little bit older or even a little more articulate, Jake wouldn’t’ve made the promise in the first place, no matter how much he might’ve felt it, or Gina would’ve said _that’s stupid, kiddo, and not at all how life works._ But they aren’t, so instead Gina just looks at him, a little wide-eyed, and nods slowly. 

“But you’ll still love me, right?” 

“Sure. Yeah, I guess, but that’s different.” 

Gina looks at him and feels a pang in her chest: soft, determined eyes and fluffy hair and ears he still hasn’t grown into. The kid has no business making promises like that. 

“Good, ‘cause I’ll love you too.” 

“Gross,” Jake says, and wrinkles his nose, but his shining, sad eyes bely him. 

“And I’m making the promise too. It’s dumb, and you’re not doing it alone.” 

Jake grins at her, and scoots a little closer, nudging his shoulder against hers. 

“Let’s make it binding.” 

Gina wrinkles her nose. “Spit-shake?” 

“Duh.” 

They spit-shake, and that’s that. End of story.

___

In high school, Jake dates and sleeps around. He acts proud. Regardless of how he acts, he’s not some James-Bond-debonair-self-assured type of guy, with his boyish face and wide, happy grin. He’s good at being the guy next door that anyone can fall for. But, true to his word, he doesn’t fall back.

After the first few times he comes wandering into Gina’s room with a self-satisfied smile and a boy or girl rushing out of the house, she stops raising her eyebrows at him, just accepts the new way of things. In the end, it doesn’t change much. They still clasp hands every once in a while, just to reaffirm it all. But Gina knows his fate, what with the way the kid races through his life with that trademark grin and messy hair and clumsy heart. When it comes down to it, he’ll break the promise. He loves too easy for his own good, whether he knows it or not.

___

Eventually, they move away to different sides of the city. He calls daily; they hang out weekly. Every now and then, he checks in on Gina: “Have you broken our most sacred vow?”

“Shit, we’re married now?”

“Fuck off, Goose.” 

He can hear her laughing into the phone. 

“You asking if I’m in love, kiddo?” 

“Please. I’m pretty sure you’re incapable of being in a stable relationship. But, yeah, I’m asking if you’ve broken our oath.” 

“What, have you?” 

Now it’s his turn to laugh, and it mixes with hers, staticky across the line. “No. I’m in the clear.” 

Jake can hear her sigh, not as subtly as she thinks. “Okay, kid.” 

They sit there in a quiet that is almost comfortable, except for Jake audibly eating Kraft mac and cheese over the phone. 

“So, I start my actual adult job soon. Detective at the 99th precinct.” 

Jake can hear Gina scoffing from over the phone and can picture her wrinkled nose from across the entire city. “Ugh. Sounds awful. Plus, we’ll definitely never see each other now.” 

“What do you do even do all day? Like, for money?” he asks, and, just like that, he can feel her deflating, can hear her annoyed groan. 

“God, I need a job.” 

He grins. “I bet you I can arrange something.”

___

Jake’s been there for a year when someone new transfers.

He makes friends easily; anyone can attest to that. One just has to get past his perceived cockiness and general jackassery to see a kind, genuine, funny man.

But when Detective Santiago walks into the precinct, all flustered smiles and firm handshakes and bangs that get in the way of her eyes when she leans over her paperwork, everyone is pretty sure Jake is screwed. 

They bicker fucking _constantly_ and it drives the entire precinct up the wall. 

“Santiago, give it back!” 

“It’s my case file, idiot! Get your own, try maybe doing your damn _job_ for once--” 

It’s enough to make anyone feel like the parent of a pair of toddlers. 

“Alright. Detective Santiago, Detective Peralta, you’re together on the case that Santiago’s currently working now. And-- great news!-- we just got intel that the suspects are at the abandoned warehouse by the docks. You’ll be there for the next twenty-four hours in the crappy hotel facing it from across the street. In fact, you’ll be together on every stakeout that comes our way until you figure out how to get along.” 

Jake groans and repeatedly knocks his head against his chair’s dilapidated headrest. 

Amy almost staples her hand. “What? Sergeant, there’s no way I can work with Peralta--” 

Jake leaps out of his chair, sending it rolling into Rosa’s desk, who glares at him. “Exactly! We hate each other! We’ll be so busy arguing nothing will get done, Sarge!” 

“Come on, Jake.” Terry stares at him, and Jake wilts, slumping down to his knees in front of his desk. 

“Fine.” 

___ 

That stakeout is, irrefutably, the most hellish night Jake has ever lived through. 

So is the next stakeout. 

And the next. 

And the next. 

Until, suddenly, inexplicably, something changes. 

The bitter argument turns into light teasing, jabs that can barely be understood through the laughter. Sure, they still piss each other off. Sure, Amy nags at him to clean his car and his clothes and his life, and sure, Jake tells her to get off his back and have some fun and tells jokes that make her want to jump out of their moving car, but still. There’s an indisputable warmth between them now. 

There wasn’t a catalyzing moment that changed everything; mostly, they didn’t need a catalyst. It was natural and smooth, the kind of transition that was foreseeable but that, for some reason, no one could have predicted. 

Jake makes one of his famed sex tape jokes. Amy throws a stapler at him, misses horribly, and ends up hitting Hitchcock in the head. They laugh, uproariously, until McGintley wakes up and yells at them before promptly going back to sleep.

Terry breathes freely for the first time in months. 

Gina raises a skeptical eyebrow and makes a mental note to call Jake sometime in the next couple days. 

___

After a while, as Jake frantically dates more and more women, on and off, sometimes almost falling in love and other times trying to revive his fake debonair-self, something starts to feel off. 

One night, he calls Gina. It’s three in the morning, he’s watched his digital clock change numbers for hours, a cold case is ripping at the edge of his brain, and all he can think about is that damned promise made in front of the flickering TV. 

She picks up after one ring. “Jake?”

“What if I’m cursed?” 

“What the fuck, kiddo?” 

“Really. Really, because I don’t know.” 

“Are you okay? How long has it been since you’ve slept? You need a hug? Some drugs?” 

“Goose, no, I’m asking. It’s just. It’s three in the morning. I haven’t slept in seventy-two hours for some fuckin’ reason--” 

“Oh my God, Jake--” 

“Do you think I’m cursed? What if I can’t fall in love? What if everything that happened as a kid just screwed me over forever? What if nothing ever works out and I just die alone?” 

“Jake. You need to sleep.” 

He breathes out a shuddering breath and closes his stinging eyes. “Sleep won’t fix this, Gina. I’m scared.” 

It’s quiet for a moment, except for the sound of his ragged breathing and her soft, quick breaths. 

“Have you broken our promise?” 

Jake laughs bitterly. “Not yet. But I want to.” 

She smiles, sadly. “Good.” 

___

He goes undercover. 

He lays in bed at night, and all he can think is _what if I’ve broken my promise?_

It’s lonely. It’s empty. When he listens to the rain pounding on the windows of the house he’s living in now, he thinks of her. When he watches a movie, he thinks of her. When he touches the hilt of his knife, he thinks of her. He misses her the way a flooded world misses the sun, so much that it aches, tenses up somewhere just behind his sternum, and he knows he needs to get used to the pain, he fucking _has_ to. 

Ironically, thinking of her helps: the warm, kind eyes with their startling intensity. The ferocity in every line of her body when she’s angry. The soft upturn of her lips when he says something more genuine than he intended. 

Jake stares at the ceiling, and, for reasons escaping his knowledge, tries not to cry. 

_Amy._

____

The day he comes back, he hugs Gina as soon as he can, and she laughs tearfully into his shoulder.

“I missed you, kiddo.” 

“You too, Goose.” 

“Broke your promise yet?” she asks reflexively. 

Jake grins with an edge of bitterness. “Nah.” 

She pulls him closer.

____

The concept of love scares the shit out of him.

He wishes, so much, that he could stop being afraid of it: it was natural, it was human, it was so easily broken, and that’s how it was supposed to be. 

When Jake kisses Amy for the first time, it feels like his heart has fallen out of his chest, it feels like something has cracked open somewhere inside his ribcage, and when he can feel her smiling against his lips, he almost wants to cry. 

When Amy kisses Jake for the first time, any misgivings he might have had dissipate for a moment, like water evaporating in the sun. 

Slowly, carefully, she coaxes him into some kind of light, away from flickering screens and junk food and twisted, bitter promises made in the dark safety of a living room (the house isn’t there anymore. Jake hears it was demolished by an earthquake a decade ago, and something inside him breaks). It’s slow, dangerous going. It’s not perfect. Often, he finds himself curled on their couch with a lump in his throat, wondering, thinking of moving vans pulling away from little suburban houses and mac and cheese and the broken kind of sad his mother had been all those years ago; the brokenness she hides inside of herself still. He wonders if he’ll turn out that way. He wonders if he’ll turn out like his mother or his father. 

Amy says, _there are more options._

Jake thinks, _this is more of an inevitability than an option._

___

The moment he realizes he’s broken his promise is so innocuous and quiet that he’s sure that if he told Amy, she wouldn’t remember. 

Because in the end, they’re just lying in bed and Amy is curled around him, ankle hooked under his knees and arms wound around his shoulders and cheek resting against his bare collarbone, and he’s pressing a soft kiss to her temple when he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, what kind of thing this is. 

She blinks up at him and smiles sleepily. “Go to sleep.” Her fingers are tracing circles on the bones of his neck, and her dark brown eyes are warm with affection, and Jake can’t stop the smile breaking across his face. “What is it?” 

He laughs, then, and drops his head to press against hers. “Nothing,” he murmurs, grinning like an absolute idiot, and kisses her. 

___

When he calls Gina to tell her, with a hesitant sort of pride, that he’s broken their promise, Amy is attempting to cook in the other room. He can hear her humming over the sound of chopping. 

“Jake, babe, can you grab me that old apron of yours? I feel like this is gonna get messy.” 

He laughs as he dials, pulling the apron out of the third drawer down and tossing it at her. “Good. I’ve been telling you for years that messy is the only way to cook.” 

Gina picks up, and Jake slowly raises the phone to his ear. 

“What’s up, kiddo?” 

He meets Amy’s perplexed eyes. “I broke my promise.” 

Gina’s laugh is loud and bright in his ears. “Finally you fuckin’ admit it, you absolute idiot.” 

“Whatever, Goose.” He pauses. “Love you.” 

“Yeah, I love you too, dumbass. And I’m proud of you. Go have explosive sex for the next twenty-four hours.” 

Jake winces. “You sound like Boyle.” 

Gina gasps with exaggerated offense. “Jacob Peralta, I was having a genuine moment of affection and love for you, how _dare_ you ruin it.” 

He snickers. “See you at work tomorrow, Gina.” 

She sniffs, and Jake can physically hear her flicking her hair behind her shoulders. “You wish, kiddo.” 

Jake looks up at Amy, who looks the perfect mix of apprehensive and amused. “What was that even about?” she asks slowly, a hesitant smile pulling at the edges of her lips. 

“I love you,” he says in an uncharacteristic, awkward rush, and kicks himself internally. _Fuck._ Jake closes his eyes, and he waits for her to kick him out, to yell at him, to sigh and say _sorry but I just don’t feel the same way, I think maybe you should go back to your place, Jake._

But then, he opens his eyes. 

She looks stunned for a moment, until the hint of the smile pulls up into a full on radiant grin. 

“I love you, too.” 

Jake has no idea who moves first, but then there they are, meeting in the middle anyway, pressed together from head to toe, lips insistent and demanding and ecstatic, and as far as he’s considered, he could drown in her and still be happy. Their teeth clack together, and it’s then they realize that they’re both smiling too hard for this to work, and then they’re laughing into each other’s mouths, leaning against the kitchen counter. Amy pulls back, eyes shining with tears or maybe just joy. 

“God, I love you,” she whispers, and Jake just kisses her, long and breathless, until they’re both tangled up in each other and out of breath and full of a simple, beautiful kind of wonder.

“Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! this is unedited, so tell me if i made a mistake (or ten). comment/kudos if this made you feel anything at all haha, thanks again for reading guys


End file.
